yami759I personally have the MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning edition and have also had several other brands as well in the past (EVGA, Asus, Zotac, Gigabyte, etc). For me, MSI's 'twin frozr' (or trifrozr for the LE) technology is superb. The card is nearly silent at idle and pretty darn quiet at heavy loads as well which is amazing for what it's already clocked at out-of-box. Not to mention I don't feel any hot air hitting my face as my system sits at the bottom of my desk.
The EVGA cards weren't as quiet and the temps always seemed higher as the fans seemed to be always spinning at high RPMs. The one benefit that I see for EVGA is that their warranty is better than MSI.
pordssam89here is the thing about noise,I also run twin gtx 980 ti by asus and to be honest sound has never ever been a factor gaming for me......my surround sound kills out everything while I am gaming,in fact had to do a add on room with soundproofing inside the walls and it rocks !most of the nvidia cards are usually quiet but the red team I have seen has always been loud but like I said gaming with head phones or surround sound and your not going to here much fan noise at all I sure don't
Sargento42Blower coolers are always bad. The 290/290x ref cooler in particular runs like a leafblower, but my ref 780 Ti is pretty noticeable once it cranks up too. If I stop and actively listen for it, I can hear it even with my headphones on. But what's the point of playing a game to listen to the fan noise...?
Any of the aftermarket coolers are an improvement in noise and temps from blower coolers. However they dump their heat into the case instead of pumping it out the back. This can cause throttling in mITX or SLI builds, in which case you may be better off with the blower, noise and all. Or, a custom liquid-cooling loop will do best of all.
EVGA cards are OK and their service is great. I don't think their high-end cards are as compelling an offering as the high-end Gigabyte or MSI cards for the money, but we're talking maybe a 5% difference in performance. No need to pass one up if you saw a great deal.
yami759MSI card doesn't buzz like a lot of EVGA cards. The temperatures are lower, the overclocking potential is MUCH higher. I can push +500 Mhz mem and +300 mhz core without increasing voltage on a 980 Ti LE. My Kingpin chokes the moment I push it a tiny bit (this goes for 2 cards in a row).
j4yl1uI had the opposite experience with 2 MSI's I had. I exchanged them after a fan broke on one and all they had in was EVGA so I got out with what they gave me.
Of the MSI cards they overclocked very well. However, they had very noticeable screeching sounds occurring when under load. Furmark was insanely unpleasant to run while sitting in the room.
I had 2 MSI's in SLI and the top card was always roasting. Fans screaming. Eventually I heard a grinding noise and found one of the fan blades broken off and wedged between the heat sink and other fan blades. When I removed it the card worked but vibrated like crazy.
My EVGA cards have no coil whine, but both are garbage for over-clocking. I don't bother as I hate when games crash.
Both EVGA cards have lower ASIC scores than my MSI cards had so that explains the poor EVGA overclocking. Still, in the end I didn't get a month out of my MSI SLI setup. I think ASIC score is more of the luck of the draw than anything though.
MenaceR32mass production = there's a chance of failure with all brands. that much we can all agree on.
now, i've been building PCs since the XT era, that's a 8086 proc for you youngsters.
in almost 30 years, i've had exactly 1 card fail on me, and that's because i abused the hell out of it. It was a ATI 9700 which i modded into a 9700pro and overclocked it to death.
i just cannot understand how having a bad experience with a brand once or even twice can decide your buying.
i've used all sorts of brands: matrox mystique, voodoo banshee, 2, 3, TNT2, geforce DDR, geforce 2, 3ti, ati 9700, then saphire, powercolor, gainward, asus, gigabyte, msi, evga, hell you name it, i probably used it one time or another. Currently on dual gtx970 gigabyte G1s.
coil whine? don't be a female dog. fast computers are not supposed to be quiet, unless going full water cooling.
i think this msi here is a hell of a card. Asic scores.........like ok that 5% higher points is gonna break or make a game? really? overclocking gonna break a game? it will not change the experience you get honestly. it's still a beast of a card even @ stock speeds.
getting a couple more FPS on games when you are already going over 100fps makes little to no difference. Get a G-sync monitor, it is EYE opening. i invested heavily on a Asus Rog swift instead of upgrading video cards. best damn $800 i spent last year.
NYalexI'm all about g-sync, but I am waiting for an ultrawide/ips version. predator x34 might do it for me. but at 1200 bones, i'm holding off just a little longer. so much tech going on with gpu's and displays right now.
I do need this card now however. I have an ATI 9700. Not realizing that rendering 4k footage on the damn thing is not really possible. GTX it is.
NYalexYou got me beat by a few years. I started out with 286's. My first was a 6/12MHz with 640K RAM and eventually the extra 1024K. I worked in a PC shop through high school and until I finished college. As far as actual hardware failures go, there were not that many. Most people came in for service because of something stupid they or their kids did.
I'm baffled to read you write, "i just cannot understand how having a bad experience with a brand once or even twice can decide your buying." Maybe if you are spending your parent's money that makes sense. This is how the world works.
I took a chance on what I always thought was a high end manufacturer, MSI. One of the MSI cards failed and they did not reply to my support requests. I was left holding the bag until a retailer offered to RMA the cards if I agreed to purchase something the same day of similar value it would just be a straight refund and purchase.
Why would I chose MSI again over the makes that have not failed me? It's basic human nature. How can't you understand that considering that is how 99/100 people think?
Coil whine? Don't be an fool, it is not acceptable. Fast computers are supposed to be whatever you build them to be! A silent or whisper quiet build does not have to include a water loop and should not be ruined by a screeching GPU. Not everyone has terrible hearing. A product with LOUD coil whine is garbage at this price point.
You missed my point in the end. I never said this was not a beast of a card. ASIC scores on the MSI cards were better and they absolutely do matter. It is what in the end determines your max stable core overclock. You should know this, especially considering you have been doing this since the XT era. With premium products like this it's all about the big numbers.
I merely shared a negative experience I had with MSI support and the surprise I found in EVGA. Your experience may be different but it still does not change the fact that I experienced my challenges with MSI. This is the discussion forum, right?
MenaceR32Paying $600+ for a GPU and expecting it to never have coil whine no matter what you put it through is like buying a $1m+ lambo and expecting it to get hundreds of miles per gallon just because you spent more money on it. Coil whine happens and there's not really much you can do about it without sacrificing something. I have found in my personal experience that there are a few ways to lesson or even get rid of coil whine. The easiest way is by turning vsync on or by capping how many FPS you get in w/e game you're playing (assuming that you are gaming with it seeing as this GPU is pretty much for gamers). A better way (imo) is by physically moving the card down to the second, third, or even fourth PCI-e x16 slot on your mobo. This gets the GPU farther away from the CPU area which is where a lot of electrical interference is happening which is one of the causes of coil whine (one that I've found).
WillRock92I can agree with that. The coil whine we are all familiar with is fine with me. It's more of a electric hum when things are working right. My main gripe with the one card that failed was that it sounded like a dentist's drill. I'm pretty sure it was only one of the MSI cards that did it. It was the top card. The fans were like jet engines at load. I could still hear that drill sound even with a pair of headphones on.
I have an old 1990 beater GTR R32. Every time I get out of it I feel like I got hit with a concussive grenade. I expect that from a car with 4 times the HP of my Impreza. It is an orders of magnitude difference we are talking about there.
The EVGA cards I can say for sure are not as powerful as the MSI ones were. They don't overclock as well. Not even close.
It is a TINY margin though (5%?). Not quadruple. So no dentist drill is a no brainier compromise for me. If they were 4 times faster I would wear ear plugs sitting at my PC like I do when I drive the GTR. In the end my 34" UW is 60Hz which the slightly slower EVGA cards hit just fine in any title I have got into so far.
WillRock92no that is nonsense and a terrible comparison. Coil whine often is caused by crappy inductors and it just means the big brands are cost cutting on electronics and as a result you get coil whine. Same thing happens with shitty PSUs
SenorPlatanoAren't Titans for normally for GPGPU applications not games? I thought Titans were not really all that much better than the average GTX except they have a buttload of memory and CUDA cores.
chris.yw4K games don't use over 6GB of VRAM, some games use 4GB and that's why there was controversy over the GTX 970, and I'm pretty sure they don't use 4 GB of VRAM at all times, just at some parts, but during the small parts the fps would drop horribly. In BF4 you can get 30fps max settings at 4K.
SenorPlatanoYea this is what I was getting at. Titan X's are for professionals not gamers, not really the same market or use case so I could see a Titan X drop being helpful, if not more so than a 980ti drop, to some.
NYalexJust to let you know, G-Sync is a hindrance if you are playing at a competitive level. It increases input lag by 5-15ms. If you only play casually you probably won't be able to feel it, but most competitive players will notice it. I am not saying G-Sync is bad, I play games and have a G-Sync monitor myself, but I only use the G-Sync feature on single player games that don't require precise timing. A nice feature G-Sync monitors come with is ULMB or 'ultra low motion blur' which is actually helpful in competitive play (ULMB only works on 120hz non-GSync mode).
wes1099i'm too old to compete in FPS titles. my hand-eye coordination just ain't there anymore.
never really noticed any significant input lag to be honest, i've tried black ops 3 (got my a$$ handed by high school kids) and BF4 (i'm a little better at this).
my gsync is a TN panel (rog swift), i really notice no input lag. then again, my eyes are getting old.
NYalexI learned to just do the objectives in every FPS I play because otherwise I will only become disappointed if I think my KD should matter. And with that in mind, I am generally in the top 3. So that's a success in my eyes.
WillRock92Cleaner power surely has something to do with it, i had some whine with a 780ti with a Corsair TX series and when i moved to a HX in prep for SLI the whine disappeared. Could've been a coincidence though.
MenaceR32Umm. My evga gtx 980 sc over clocks to 1.5 GHz or 1500 MHz pretty easily. Saying that don't overclock as well depends on the samples in question. One of my friends has the MSI version and his can barely get to 1400 MHz without crashing. So yea, not entirely true.